Love, Lily
by Anrheithwyr
Summary: After all this time, he was still afraid of the past. Especially her.


_Disclaimer: Lana owns none of this! The letter was copied from the Wiki page, so credit to that. And credit to Joanne for coming up with Snape, so that Alan Rickman had a chance to be surly and amazing. _

The front door is difficult, but he's learned how to pick locks. Even magical ones.

The ghost, Dumbledore's, does its job well. It terrifies him, reminds him of his job, his "duty". Stupid old man. Stupid Potter.

A simple glance about the front room shows him the elf hasn't been by recently. Hadn't he been sent to work at Hogwarts last year? He doesn't particularly care about the house elf, but it would be nice to have something here to clean up the dust and dirt and whatever this bloody house was infested with.

He wondered if walking up the stairs was safe. Would he fall if he tried?

A quick glance in the kitchen revealed signs of human life.

"Ahhh, I forgot. Fletcher has been by," he says to the empty, dusty room. The silverware drawer is empty, all the silver gone. He wonders if Fletcher had gone through every room. This is most likely, as the sticky-fingered thief would be daft to leave the upstairs alone, knowing that even a quarter of the objects in this house were probably worth a fortune.

Up three flights of stairs and he still doesn't reach the attic. Stopping for several minutes to stare in horror at the row of long deceased elf heads. They disgust him.

"Obviously never been looked at by a decorator," he comments dryly, sweeping up the stairs, leaving the dead elves behind him. For a second he wonders what Black's head would look like on a wall.

"Probably scare anyone who comes by."

Several glances into rooms on the way up reveal they, too, have been carefully gutted of everything valuable. He recalls the conversation he had with Dumbledore, back before his death, about the small fit Potter had had over catching Fletcher with some of the things from the house. Ironic, considering both he and Black appeared to have hated this place.

A glance into one dusty, abandoned room sent him to the floor, coughing deeply. As he sat on the floor, trying to control himself, he heard a banging from below him. He recalled the boggart that had been disposed of in 1995. Perhaps there were more.

Standing on the drawing of the third floor, he's faced with two doors. One of the doors has a door sign, reading the name '_Regulus Arcturus Black'_ in swirling fancy lettering.

He had forgotten about Black's baby brother, the Slytherin Seeker who had died on a suicide mission to stop Voldemort. He had been nineteen. Voldemort had claimed he'd died trying to turn from the Death Eaters.

It had been used as a warning to the rest of them.

The door is locked and he has no wish to see the room of the permanently nineteen year old boy.

The other also has a nameplate. '_Sirius'_. Basic. Like it's deceased owner.

He opens the door carefully, worried about more dusty ghosts coming at him, like Dumbledore's downstairs.

None do.

It's a spacious, but very dirty, room. He sneezes, wondering what diseases he will be picking up from this room. Probably some rare Gryffindor illness that would kill him. Or turn him into an idiot, which was practically the same thing.

He sat down on the dusty bed; it's red and gold sheets sending up plumes of dirt around him in a swirling cloud. He jumped, recalling the Dumbledore scare downstairs, but it made no attempt to form into the 36 year old form of Sirius Black. It was regular old dirt.

His eyes scanned the floor, covered with papers and books.

"Couldn't even clean his own room," he sneered. It didn't occur to him that Fletcher had messed up the room. He wouldn't allow that to cross his mind. Giving Black any slack? A preposterous idea.

The rooms made him smirk in disgust. The rooms were the same as the bed sheets, clearly done by an unprofessional teen in the dark. Several Gryffindor banners hung on the walls, next to….pictures of scantily clad Muggle girls. Clearly, Black had always been a pervert. There were several pictures of motorcycles. Severus recalled that Black used to own one.

He spotted a picture of his four bullies through his time in Hogwarts; the Marauders, all four of them, gathered together, grinning. His tormentors. It had mostly been Potter and Black, but the sight of these four young men, happy, unaware of their futures, still disturbed him. How could they smile? Knowing what would happen to them, within years, he wondered how they could laugh and smirk.

His eyes dropped to the ground, scanning the papers. Old essays and homework and notes. Textbooks, all the way back to first year, littered the ground. He made a noise in the back of his throat, as he sifted through old memories. His eyes glanced at an old journal, containing notes written between Potter and Black, talking about whatever two Gryffindor perverts discussed in History class.

Something caught his eye, and, bending down he saw a photograph, lying on the floor. In it was a young red-haired woman, laughing, sitting on the ground as what appeared to be a pair of legs chased a little boy around as the tot rode a toy broomstick. He blinked back tears, staring down at Lily, who seemed so careless and free, watching her infant son.

He saw a two sheets of paper laying next to where he had picked up the letter and, upon snatching it up, he read it, puzzled.

_Dear Padfoot, _

_Thank you, thank you, for Harry's birthday present! It was his favourite by far. One year old and already'__** '**__zooming along on a toy broomstick, he looked so pleased with himself, I'm enclosing a picture so you can see. You know it only rises about two feet off the ground, but he nearly killed the cat and he smashed a horrible vase Petunia sent me for Christmas (no complaints there). Of course,____James thought it was funny, says he's going to be a great Quidditch player, but we've had to pack away all the ornaments and make sure we don't take our eyes off him when he gets going._

_We had a very quiet birthday tea, just us and old Bathilda, who has always been sweet to us, and who dotes on Harry. We were so sorry you couldn't come, but the Order's got to come first, and Harry's not old enough to know it's his birthday anyway! James is getting a bit frustrated shut up here, he tries not to show it but I can tell - also, Dumbledore's still got his Invisibility Cloak, so no chance of little excursions. If you could visit, it would cheer him up so much. Wormy was here last weekend, I thought he seemed down, but that was probably the news about the McKinnons; I cried all evening when I heard._

_Bathilda drops in most days, she's a fascinating old thing with the most amazing stories _

_about Dumbledore, I'm not sure he'd be pleased if he knew! I don't know how much to _

_believe, actually, because it seems incredible that Dumbledore-_

He blinked, looking down at her words. Tears sprang to his eyes, threatening to fall and

smear the words, written years ago. Brushing his robes over his eyes, he looked at the

second page, which was short.

_-could ever have been friends with Gellert Grindelwald. I think her mind's going, personally!_

_Lots of love,_

_Lily _

He glared down at the words, which had been written to Black sixteen years ago. It could have been, should have been, him that Lily wrote about to a friend. Talked about _their_ kids. Bragged about how _their_ family was doing.

"_Mudblood!"_ he had yelled. _"Mudblood!" _The simple, so complicated word that had ruined any chance of _him_ being the father of her children, the husband she wrote about.

But, still, looking down at those last two words,

_love,_

_Lily_

He felt as if, for just a second, they were still fifteen, and he had never said that word.

He remembered those white lilies on her desk every day in Sixth Year. He remembered when she had gone out with Amos Diggory, and later, Potter. When she had married the Gryffindor. When she had died.

"I love you, Lily," he muttered, tearing the picture in half, tucking the half with Lily into his pocket. He took the second page of the letter and placed in his robes.

He left, downstairs, out of the house, away from the words written about Potter and their child. He smiled, knowing he had

_Lots of love,_

_Lily_

in his pocket. That was one ghost he was perfectly fine with having hanging around him.

_Lots of love,_

_Lily_

**Did you like it? No? That's ok if you didn't. I enjoyed the week I spent trying to perfect it. It needed to sort of show that Severus is never letting go of Lily. Also, if you read my stories involving Lily or Severus or James, they often involve the comments about the **Mudblood** incident or the white lilies on Lily's desk. They're an important event (purely fabricated, but I think it's a cute fabricated idea, don't you?) It's probably, those white lilies, are going to be their own story. See, I don't write so you can say, **Oh, I love it!** I write to present ideas that I think need to be shown. Stories that need to be examined. People that need to be saved. **


End file.
